PRETORIA, Nov 24 (IPS) -- There was a massive advertising and
media campaign, and the cause was a genuine one. Yet, only about 2000 South
Africans turned up for the National Men's March to pledge their commitment
to fight violence against women.

Men
Urged to Support Fight Against Gender Violence
BuaNews (Pretoria) - Edwin
Tshivhidzo

November 11, 2002

Non-Governmental
Organisations (NGOs) fighting for women's rights have called on the active
participation of men in the fight against gender violence.

They
have called on men to spread peace in their families during the 16 Days of
Activism campaign of No Violence against Women and Children, to run from 25
November to 10 December.

The
Department of Justice and Constitutional Development will officially launch
the campaign on 19 November to mobilise all sectors of society to promote
non-violence against women and children.

The16
Days of Activism is an international campaign, aimed at raising public
awareness on human rights and gender violence.

During
this time, women and human rights organisations all over the world will
concentrate their efforts on raising awareness on all forms of violence
against women and children.

Addressing
the media in Johannesburg today, Gender Links director Colleen Lowe Morna,
said it was time abusive men considered 'women as human beings and respected
their rights.'

'For
a long time women have suffered in the hands of their abusive partners, now
its time it comes to an end,' said Ms Morna.

'Its
time that all women unite and speak with one voice and say enough is
enough!'

Men's
Forum director Mbuyiselo Botha said not all men were bad but those that
violated women's rights needed serious help.

He
appealed to communities to unite and stand up against violence on women.

Tebogo
Matoane from Young Women's Network said a culture of peace was needed.

Workshops
on how domestic violence can be curbed will be conducted throughout the
country during this time. The campaign will coincide with a commemoration of
the Mirabal sisters who were brutally murdered by the Trujillo dictatorship
in the Dominican Republic in 1960. Other events to be commemorated will
include the Montreal Massacre, when a man gunned down 14 women engineering
students he accused of being feminists. Activities planned for the period
range from candlelight vigils for victims of domestic violence and other
forms of violence, and public education campaigns on violence against women
and children. South Africa has been promoting the 16 Days of Activism
campaign of No Violence against Women and Children for the past four years.

Since
1998, through its “Men As Partners” (MAP) Program, EngenderHealth
and the Planned Parenthood Association of South Africa (PPASA) have been
working with men in communities, schools, and workplace settings to explore
society’s messages regarding the roles of men and women, relationships
between the sexes, power imbalances based on gender, and gender-based
violence. This workshop will expose participants to highly successful MAP
strategies, including the use of interactive and reflective activities to
help men understand and address negative gender and social norms that lead
to violence against women and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The programme has been designed with the overall objective of
increasing men's participation and joint responsibility in all areas of
sexual and reproductive health and sensitising men to gender issues as an
essential element to ensure gender equality. Ultimately, the programme will
seek to affect attitudinal and behavioural changes in men so that they
practice safer sex and participate in reproductive health decision making.
The programme will target youth through PPASA's Adolescent Reproductive
Health Services and a programme that will target older men will be piloted
in four of PPASA's provincial offices; Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape
and Western Cape.

The main objectives of the Men as Partners programme
include:

increasing men's support of the reproductive health
choices of their partner

improving communication between partners around issues
of sexual and reproductive health

strengthening IEC materials in an effort to raise
gender sensitivity by addressing gender roles and their effect in
shaping relations between partners

increasing men's access to reproductive health
information and services and therefore increasing contraceptive use as
well as the number of men reporting to clinics for STD treatment

decreasing the number of unwanted pregnancies, unsafe
abortions and STDs

improving skills of health professionals by training
them in men's reproductive health in an effort to provide male-friendly
services

decreasing gender violence in all its forms.

Sex
and football
Innovative community education in South Africa

Many development programs effectively empower primarily
the men in a community. However, Community Aid Abroad believes that real
social change often comes only when women are empowered to change their
community for the better. That's why all of our development activities are
assessed according to gender; according to what they are doing for women's
lives. Sometimes this is as concrete as setting up women's credit schemes,
while other programs actually tackle relationships between men and women.
One such program is the Men in Soccer program in South Africa, which aims to
empower women by changing men's attitudes and behaviour around safer sex and
HIV.

The Men in Soccer program is working with forty soccer
teams in four districts around Durban, South Africa. The focus on soccer
clubs makes sense: soccer is the most popular sport for South Africans. Not
only do good players have high status, soccer clubs are important community
meeting points throughout the country. The Men in Soccer program aims to
raise AIDS awareness through peer education. Two volunteers from each team
will be trained about AIDS, safe sex and the management of sexually
transmitted infections. They then pass this information on to the rest of
the team informally in normal social settings, and teams will develop public
awareness messages and activities for their supporters. The impact of the
program will be evaluated after three years, including by talking with
partners of the soccer players to see if there has been behavioural change.
The Men in Soccer program is a very ambitious project, aimed directly at
influencing men's behaviour. By dealing with AIDS and gender issues through
working with men, we hope that women's power to negotiate safe sex can be
increased.

Robert Morrel

28/05/99

There is quite a lot happening in South Africa in terms of gender - in terms of
profeminist men (by the way, this is a term that does not sit comfortably with all men
working in gender related areas - against domestic abuse, in the field of AIDS, in areas
of reconciliation - there is some antipathy towards 'feminism' (understood as a 'western'
import and hence as imperialist)). I edited a special issue of the feminist journal,
AGENDA last year Its theme was 'The new men?' and it included a number of articles on
initiatives in South Africa which make masculinity a central part of gender work. It was
issue #37.

I hope this is of some use - it is the best summary of 'profeminist' action in South
Africa.

I forgot to mention that IASOM news (The journal of the International Association for
the Study of Men) is devoting its next issue to Men and Violence. Michael Kaufman is
editing it and its due out at the Women's World Conference in Tromso in June. I have a
short article on South Africa in that issue.

With best wishes

Robert

--------------------------------------------------

Men against Gender Based
Violence

The Men against Gender Based
Violence Programme conducted a review of existing men groups in Malawi,
South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia and Namibia. FEMNET documented and hopes to
share the experiences with other male groups in the continent to encourage
formation of more men groups and in the process strengthen the Africa
Network of Men for Gender Equality. FEMNET will also share the experience
with national, regional and global networks, including the INSTRAW and
UNIFEM networks. FEMNET launched the Men to Men Initiative in 2001, to mark
the Sixteen Days of Activism Against Violence on Women. The FEMNET
contribution to the campaign targeted men, and marked the beginning of a
partnership to promote and increase male involvement and action to combat
gender based violence at the Africa regional level.

FEMNET’s involvement in the Men
to Men Project started with a men to men consultation held in December 2001.
The consultation brought together men from Kenya, Malawi, Namibia and South
Africa, representing community organisations, human rights and legal groups,
religious organisations, universities and the police. The Consultation
culminated in the development of a plan of action, which specified some
follow-up action at the regional and national levels. Participants committed
themselves to take action and requested FEMNET to host the African Network
of Men Against Gender Based Violence. On the basis of this recommendation
and the proposed follow-up actions, FEMNET developed the Men to Men Project.
The project is being implemented with partners from Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi,
Namibia, Zambia and South Africa.

When an older man raised his hand
to speak on the third day of a gender workshop in Hoedspruit, a rural
community in northern South Africa, Bafana Khumalo’s heart sank. As the
facilitator of the workshop, which specifically targeted men, he had already
touched on what makes men real men and how the unequal power between men and
women was helping to fuel the sky-rocketing increase in HIV and AIDS in
South Africa.

Mr. Khumalo worried that the
participant would give a lecture about how thinking that men and women are
equal goes against African culture or how giving women power is dividing
families. Older men are deeply respected in rural communities and he knew
this man could spoil the workshop.

“Yesterday, after I got home”,
the man began, “I called my sons. I called my wife. And I explained what
we are doing in this workshop”. He told his children that things had to
change in their home. No longer could their mother come back tired from a
day of work and be expected to cook, clean, wash the dishes and clear up all
on her own. It was simply unfair.

From now on, he told his
children, they would have to do some of the household work. “You have to
start cleaning and tidying the house. You have to begin preparing dinner so
when your mother comes home she can see that we have all contributed. I can’t
learn to cook. I am too old. But I will wash the dishes.” For Mr. Khumalo,
it was a big moment.

This participant had accepted a
key idea of the workshop: that we are not born knowing what it means to be a
man. We learn what manliness is from the people around us who have decided
what it means. And because it is something society has decided on, it can
also be changed by society. In the past, we have said that manhood is about
“dominance and aggression, sexual conquest and fearlessness,” says Mr.
Khumalo. These social ideas also say how men and women should behave. If we
want to improve out lives today, we have to examine all the different ways
in which men and women are unequal.

Making progress

“I look back at this moment,”
he told Africa Renewal, “and I realise we are getting somewhere. This
story is repeated again and again whenever we do our programme.” Across
South Africa, such workshops are beginning to change attitudes. Research by
the South African Men as Partners network shows that 71 per cent of men
taking part in such workshops believe that women should have the same rights
as men, compared with only 25 per cent more generally. Asked whether they
thought it was normal to sometimes beat their wives, 82 per cent of workshop
participants said it was not, while 38 per cent of non-participants thought
wife-beating was normal.

Mr. Khumalo is co-director of
Sonke Gender Justice, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) formed in 2006
to try to deal with violence against women and HIV/AIDS. He was struck, he
says, by how ‘hungry’ the men in his workshops are to discuss violence
against women and their role in that violence. “They express a heartfelt
need to be different men and different fathers from the older generation of
men”. He strongly believes that gender equality can not be achieved only
through women’s empowerment alone and that men’s behaviour and attitudes
are driving both the HIV epidemic and violence against women.

Numerous studies find that South
Africa has the highest incidence of reported rape of any country in the
world. In 2006, the South African Medical Research Council surveyed 1,370
male volunteers from 70 villages and found that close to one man in four had
participated in sexual violence. More than 16 per cent had raped a woman who
was not his partner or had participated in gang rape, and 8.4 per cent had
been sexually violent towards an intimate partner.

When apartheid ended in 1994,
achieving equality between women and men was a major goal of the new
government. The protection and promotion of women’s rights and gender
equality was enshrined in the 1996 constitution, and a Commission on Gender
Equality was established. Six years later, Shelia Meintjes, one of the
commission members, said, “We are realising that if we don’t bring men
in as partners, we won’t win the battle”. That view guides activists’
current work with men.

Building national men against
violence campaigns

The first of this work with men
was done by women in women’s organizations. Agisanang Domestic Abuse
Prevention and Training (ADAPT), for instance, developed a programme to
educate men about domestic violence using skits performed in township
taverns and in men’s marches, one of which was attended by then President
Nelson Mandela. Eventually, men’s began to form groups specifically to
address men’s roles, their responsibilities, attitudes and behaviour. This
‘men’s movement’ has gradually spread.

Now groups like Fathers Speak
Out, the Men as Partners network and the South African Men’s Forum are
involved. Trade union federations, government departments and faith-based
groups also have programmes on gender equality and HIV. They hold workshops,
stage dramas, promote discussions in taverns, paint murals highlighting the
issues and undertake other activities that involve the community.

Sonke Gender Justice is now
trying to build a national campaign involving both men and women. Sonke’s
One Man Can campaign is one example of this broader approach. It is being
carried out in nine provinces in South Africa and is gradually being taken
up in neighbouring countries. The campaign’s messages include suggestions
about how to build trust between partners and with women in general and also
that men can love passionately, respectfully and sensitively.

“We want men to be able to
speak out and take a stand, not to have to watch from the sidelines and do
nothing,” explains Mr. Khumalo. If a man sees a woman who being beaten or
hears screams from the other side of a closed door, he needs to act
responsibly. “Women are afraid of us. They are afraid to hear footsteps
behind them in the night. We have to show them that we care and that we will
no longer accept men’s bad behaviour towards them.”